The field of the present invention relates generally to building materials designed to retard or prevent entry of outside weather or vermin into a structure at a closed entryway to a building.
An age-old problem of entryway design for buildings relates to the dual issues of excluding inclement weather and vermin from entering or impacting the interior when the entryway is shut. Materials engineers have made excellent progress in excluding inclement weather by use of flexible synthetic or rubber strips that are installed at the perimeter of the door at an entryway. Another category of flexible strips for controlling internal temperature are manufactured with rows of tightly packed bristles.
However, vermin are wily and persistent in the face of currently-known flexible barriers that are ostensibly keeping them from shelter and/or food. The term vermin relates to animals considered to be pests, including but not limited to rodents, such as rats, mice, squirrels, and the like. Other sorts of vermin include snakes and arachnids of all sorts, but notably insects, spiders, and scorpions. Particularly when the outside becomes cold and/or wet, and the vermin on the spot has a desire to seek the heat and dry environs of the interior of a building, synthetic or rubber or bristle strips may present a challenge but not a lasting one; and far less so if the vermin senses a food prize in the interior as well.
The age-old problem becomes more than a nuisance and a source of domestic discord when the invaded building is a warehouse that houses, for example, grain or other foodstuffs. In the face of such a prize of a warehouse full of food product, one can bet that rats and mice, for example, will seek a way in.
A needed improvement to currently available seal strips for building entryways is therefore needed. The inventive concept set forth herein below answers this need.